Monday, June 22, 2009

Just an alert for whatever faithful readers are out there: I'm working on several other in-house duties this week and next and won't be posting to Naked City as often as usual. You may now begin your lamentations or celebrations accordingly.Look for more regular Naked City blogging starting the first week in July.

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In what the Chamber of Commerce calls the “Mother of All Center City Plans”, virtually all Center City Charlotte employers have agreed to purchase thousands of uptown condominiums, the first step in moving suburban families to the Queen City’s core.

“It will be similar to the old mill towns that we once had in the Carolinas,” explained Zane E. Noshun, chairman of the Chamber’s Whassuptown Committee. Firms like Duke Energy, Bank of America and Wells Fargo will buy up all unoccupied uptown condos, and contract for thousands more to be built. Present employees will have two years to sell existing suburban property. After that date the employer will take over ownership and pocket any equity gain on the sale. Present and future employees will pay bargain rates to lease the company-provided housing. “If you want to work for big bucks in an uptown firm, you’ll have to live and shop there,” explained Noshun.

Employers plan to build company-owned grocery, drug, clothing and general merchandise stores throughout center city. The construction cost will be divided among the employers based on their number of uptown employees. “The workers will be able to buy essentials at our own stores at a reduced cost. Other services and entertainment will be provided by private entrepreneurs,” Noshun added.

To ensure that employees only patronize uptown establishments, employers will boot employees’ cars and trucks. Only when vacation time is taken will a boot be removed.

Asked about the overall cost, expected to reach $13 billion over the next ten years, Wells Fargo executive Bruce D. Tuttifrutti, who represents that bank on the Chamber, had this to say: “Heck, we pay that much in annual bonuses just to our investment banking people. Just look at the benefits. About 77,000 people work uptown. That’s almost 77,000 less cars clogging streets and polluting our air each workday. Since the city is under federal pressure to clean up its air before 2010, this plan will certainly get their approval. Just think about how the uptown construction boom will help the economy. There will be thousands of jobs created for bar tenders, waiters, and illegal immigrant construction workers, who in turn will now be able to afford to live in the nicer suburbs.”

The Center City Plan has caught the attention of the White House. A spokesperson said that the President is “delighted” that “somehow there ay be an opportunity to throw billions of taxpayer dollars” into this project.

Critics claim the forced exodus of suburbanites will cause blight and lower real estate values in other parts of the city, and have a detrimental impact on suburban businesses.

City and county civic leaders announced today a novel plan to make up the shortfall in contributions to United Way and other charitable organizations: Effective immediately, professional athletes and entertainers who perform within Charlotte and Mecklenburg County will be required by ordinance to only take pay proportionate to the salaries of ordinary Americans. The excess that would have been paid by or to team owners or promoters will go to help the needy.

Given the highly inflated salaries of pro golfers, basketball teams and gridiron squads, the new law is expected to raise at least $150 million annually. But local and regional residents are bemoaning what is being termed as government interference into private enterprise.

“I’m sure that professional sports franchises would have eventually seen how ridiculous and outlandish their pay scales are – probably in a century or two – and done something about it,” commented South Carolina Governor Hans Offdeloot, just back from being abducted by aliens. “There is no need for this. If A-Rod wants $28 million a year, and the owners of his team have that kind of money, which they made mainly because we all have allocated our advertising dollars into supporting these inequities, then leave it alone.”

Offdeloot may be one of those impacted by the ordinance. He and several others have been attempting to organize a professional tiddlywinks league, an enterprise that was expected to bring big profits to owners and players and attract millions of Americans who are enthralled by that sport.

Others vehemently oppose the new law. “Gosh durn liberal commies,” commented Charlottean Bubba “Crow” Magnon. “Those players and owners have the right to make all that money. I mean, look at those golfers who play in the Quail Hollow Tournament. They can hit the green in two shots. I get chills just watching them play. If that ain’t worth paying them $1 million, I don’t know what is. The missus and I sit along the fairway and watch them hit those balls, then walk a ways, sit and watch again. Life don’t get no better than that. If this law is allowed to stand, those guys won’t be able to tell their wives ‘Honey, I’m gonna play golf this weekend and get paid for it’.”

Those sentiments were shared by Bobcats fan Biff Batty. “How can anyone deny that professional basketball players aren’t worth $2 million or more a year? They run down the floor, toss the ball at a basket, then run up the floor and toss the ball at a basket. That’s work, not play. Sure, my 15-year-old son does the same thing at his school, but it’s not the same. These pros are really, really, really good at tossing a ball at a basket. Look at all they accomplish. Who is going to want to play professional ball for $70,000 to $150,000? How would they be able to live?”

Gridiron enthusiast Vino N. Cheese concurred: “These idiots who would attempt to keep professional sports in proper perspective just don’t get it. It’s all about We beating Them, which satisfies our primeval urges. There’s nothing like winning a championship. The triumphal parades, the glorification of our heroes. It’s just like being back in Rome when they beat the daylights out of those @#%*&$ Carthaginians. Besides, how else could I flaunt my own self-perceived power and wealth?”

Professional athletes are not the only ones impacted. Rapster Buster Chops anticipates he will lose most of the $350,000 he’d normally take home from his upcoming Charlotte concert. “Dog, I tell ya, I am an artist, a poet. I enlighten the brothers and sisters. Centuries ago we musicians and entertainers were treated as lowly court jesters – just there to amuse the public and live off their largess. And now some want to diss us back to what we rightly were. What is this world coming to?”

Local police and highway officials announced today a three-step program to crack down on the area’s ever-growing problem with speeding drivers and speed-related accidents.

“There’s this urban legend that you can drive 10 miles per hour over the posted speed limit and get away with it. Even the cops are starting to believe it. I don’t know why we spend millions in tax dollars establishing a proper speed for a stretch of road, then erecting and maintaining signage that is ignored by the driving public,” commented the program’s head, Lt. Dan Gump. “So, as our first step in slowing down speeders, we will simply overpaint existing signs with a number 10 digits lower than what was there before. That way motorists will end up driving the real speed limit.”

That’s not the only anti-speed weapon in the CDOT/CMPD arsenal. In step two, the city and county have contracted to buy 60 armor-plated military Humvees that will be used to regulate speed along 15 of the our most dangerous roads.

“We plan to put some of those headless Buick drivers you see in the left lane along Park Road to good use,” said Gump. “Elderly drivers will be recruited as volunteers to drive Humvees side-by-side down two or three-lane stretches of highway, while another team will start from the other end, and the cycle will be repeated throughout the day and night. Since these seniors usually drive the speed limit or less, so will the drivers of the cars behind them.”

To ensure that the lawless won’t be whipping in and out of line and attempting to pass the Humvees, 30-mm machine guns will be installed on each vehicle and manned by high-risk high school dropouts.

The final step in the crackdown’s repertoire, and one that will eventually eliminate the previous two, will be the installation of tiny, hidden, satellite-quality surveillance cameras on utility poles on both sides of various streets and roads. Each will calculate a vehicle’s speed, compare it to the limit for that street, and, when a violation is detected, transmit the images and data via wireless technology to a central storage area.

For most violations, a $50 fine will be mailed from there to the owner’s residence. But the system also has the capability of dealing immediately with the chronic speed addict. Notices of the violation and fine will be tweeted and texted to the driver’s cell phone or social networking site, allowing drivers to determine almost instantaneously when they’ve been caught. “A side benefit of this is that we’ll also be able to fine them for illegal cell phone usage while driving, with their monthly statement proving the proof. We hope to get the chronic drive-and-yak motorists off the streets as well,” Gump added.

In fact, it’s conceivable that other cameras will have caught the same motorists within the same time period. That means they may have accumulated enough points against their license in such a short time that they can expect to meet a real police officer when they arrive at home or office. Thanks to a new state law, officers will be authorized to confiscate their vehicles, getting the offenders off the roads immediately and hopefully onto public transportation where they can pose no further danger. “There may well be far less cars on our clogged streets and therefore less pollution under this system,” explained Gump, “not to mention a possible savings on street construction and maintenance costs.”

The robotic solution is expected to save the county and city the huge expense of hiring human police officers to control speed demons. “No salaries, benefits, vacations or sick days taken there,” Gump concluded.

About Mary and The Naked City blog

Mary Newsom is an Observer associate editor and op-ed columnist who's been covering growth, neighborhoods, urban design, sustainable development and related topics since 1995. In "The Naked City" you'll read her take on those topics and others.